


mama, come here. daddy, i'm alone. 'cause this house don't feel like home.

by debeauharnais



Category: Poldark (TV 2015)
Genre: Bullying, Character Study, Childhood, Gen, Pre-Canon, but i love her and she did and i won't shut up about it, elizabeth deserved better. that hasn't got anything to do with this fic, george defence squad form up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:15:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24400093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/debeauharnais/pseuds/debeauharnais
Summary: He’d tried to court friendship with the right people - the children with surnames he recognised from the lists his father had read out to him in his study; the children who could lend them favour. But he’d been too studied, too anxiously shy, too stiff. Could never smile quite right. They’d turned away from him either way.Or, George reflects on his childhood.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	mama, come here. daddy, i'm alone. 'cause this house don't feel like home.

**Author's Note:**

> this was just supposed to be a little rant for myself about how much i hate ross and a note about francis to maybe use in a future fic that turned into one big outpouring of love for george LMAO, we love to see it. utterly unedited, this is just pure stream of consciousness ♡
> 
> inspiration comes from aunt agatha's line about the first time george came to trenwith as a child and his mother's obvious lack of taste (plus more inspo from [here](https://66.media.tumblr.com/cdff4f15dcbf71bcd9a291b92786db50/674851c254722793-cb/s640x960/05bc3aebc4800f4b589235ea166ee89437278354.jpg) and [here](https://66.media.tumblr.com/cfe74cd115df4f01753d06382ae00a99/674851c254722793-be/s400x600/0790073d09eef5e1bc3210796df1bed1fea2997b.jpg)); george's left-handedness, which strikes me as a story in itself given the prejudice at the time; his accent, which is nothing like cary's; his lack of parents; how anxious and uncomfortable he seems in social situations, especially in scenes where he lingers for a moment behind someone, rehearsing what he'll say, before finding the courage to speak to them (e.g. lord falmouth's party, and when he goes up to ross in the market outside his bank), and where he looks out of place or like he doesn't fit in/is too nervous to do so (e.g. when all the other MPs are shouting in parliament and he uncertainly, quietly joins in to be a part of it and immediately looks around to see if anyone noticed); how often he fiddles with his own hands; my general loathing of ross; and, of course, the toads ♡
> 
> enjoy, my loves!! title from 'unsteady' by x ambassadors. stream 'elizabeth deserved better' x

Francis wasn’t cruel, not precisely, and not of his own accord - really, he was the friendliest of the bunch. Dim-witted and cheerful and trusting, and optimistic enough to make a blackguard’s heart ache. But he was weak and impressionable, and he held his cousin in almost worshipful regard - and when Ross’ more practised, sophisticated cruelties arose, what was poor, innocent Francis to do but hover behind and guiltily smile along? Friend of urchins and fishermen’s sons was Ross, because they knew their place - they below, he above, free to strut about and feel superior, so holier-than-thou, with his peasants for pets and their woes for his sullen-faced, self-satisfied amusements, so fond and sentimental of their suffering so long as he could be their saviour and boast to the lower classes that he was their friend and guide. 

But he was just like the rest of them. 

He took them for his pet projects, practiced recklessness and disinterest, shunned his own class for their frivolous superficiality - but each day, after he’d gotten cold playing with the peasants in their sties, he went home to a warm hearth and a full stomach and a pretty family name in that big, old house. He was untouchable. Privileged. Unbearable in his hypocrisy for not being able to see it. He got away with things peasant children would be horsewhipped through the streets for - stole hard-boiled sweets to share among them, tripped up magistrates, ran amuck in the streets, hollering and leaping over wagons stacked with hay. 

But the grandson of a blacksmith started to get airs, started to aspire above the station that even friend-of-the-unwashed-masses Ross proclaimed to so pity, and he was a thing to be laughed at and reviled. 

Ross could run screaming through Truro like a bare-footed savage, and George had to stay quiet and hold his chin up high and tuck his hands neatly behind his back just to be tolerated. Ross could have burned down Saint Paul’s, could have had any misdemeanour laughed off so fondly as the wont of the Poldarks, and he had to sit in the front row of the classroom and speak like a little lord and say _please_ and _thank you_ and keep his eyes politely, submissively downcast just to be borne. Everything his family had, everything they'd scraped together, had been worked for, had been _earned_. All Ross ever had to do was be born. 

His first day had been a terrible thing. He was the first of their family to go to school - all their hopes, all their dreams, all their ambitions rested on him, to drag them into the light, to pour into their laps all they aspired to, to be something _more_ and carry his whole family upon his back - but it was more than that. The school was for the sons of old families, for the heirs to old money, for the boys who bore ancient names. And he was the son of a banker and the grandson of a blacksmith. His father’s money was new. Garish. Unsophisticated. Common. His son was a vulgar, permitted through the doors because he’d paid double. Because he’d bribed. Because he’d piled his stinking new money onto the headmaster’s desk, in his new money waistcoat, with his new money airs and his guttural Cornish accent. 

It had been an awful, anxious morning, those few pre-dawn hours before that first day. Fogged breaths on cold windows and dim, nauseous firelight and shadows. His mother had dressed and redressed him, dismissed and called back the maid, fussed over his waistcoat and his stockings and the buckles on his shoes, curled his hair into some absurd spectacle that she had thought upper class. His father had paced back and forth in front of him, preached about the family interests and the weight on his shoulders and all the lofty hopes he would be carrying with him through those schoolhouse doors. He was not going there to learn; he was going there to better them all. 

He’d walked into the classroom after a terrible few minutes of reaching for the doorknob and hesitancy and shaky hands - and he’d been able to smell the stink of new money on himself. He’d stood there in the doorway, all the eyes of the children at the desks on him, alone and adrift, anxious and silent and red-cheeked and too warm, eyes first bright and proud and chin raised but soon sinking down to gaze self-conscious and downturned and silent at the floorboards - and he’d burned and itched with everything about him that wasn’t up to scratch. He’d imagined their eyes picking apart the cut of his breeches and the fabric of his necktie and the careful shine of his buttons, imagined them about to break into laughter at the sight of the peasant-ish line of his jaw and the too-fashionable, too-purposeful tussle of his hair and the smell of blacksmith iron rolling off him in foul, tawdry waves. Everything about him was inferior. Everything about him was new money. Everything about him was out of place in this room full of cultured heirs who could trace their lineage back centuries. The very air smelled like privilege and worship and ease, and in that horrible, shame-faced moment, it was all he wanted to smell like. Desperately. Obsessively. He wanted to douse his clothes in it, wanted to take all they were and drape it over himself. Wanted to know what it was to have that careless, certain look in their eyes. He was starving for it. 

School, as it turned out, was a terrible thing. If he felt able to be himself, if he weren’t the lone foot soldier carrying the banner of the Warleggan name, he would have wanted to make friends that first day. He was a shy, anxious boy, always ringing his hands and picking at the skin about his fingernails, always overthinking and hovering about at the fringes and working his jaw trying to find the right thing to say, but he was friendly, and he wanted desperately to have as many friends as it was possible for one to have. But, as it stood, he wasn’t there to make friends. He was there to further the family interests.

And he’d done everything wrong. He’d tried to mimic the other children, tried to be more like them if that was what being upperclass meant - but, for the most part, they took _aristocrat_ to mean _wild savage_ , and he’d never been able to mimic them in that regard. Was always looking over his shoulder, expecting the consequences of acting out, waiting for the punishment that would topple his family from their upwards climb. Didn’t matter if they were caught, but it mattered to him. He’d never been able to break the rules and flout convention like the son of an aristocrat, never had that breezy disregard for the established order - not when that was the only thing that had been drilled into him since he was old enough to understand a word, not when those conventions were recited to him like holy scripture to be studied. 

So, that had made him stand out. He’d followed them about, hung nervously at the edges - and when the moment had arisen for him to take the plunge and prove he was one of them _(come on, George, nick a little sweet)_ he’d backed down, too quiet, too rule-bound, too serious, and they’d all made a wonderful joke of it. 

He’d tried to curate a respectable accent - not the accents of Uncle Cary and his parents, not the squalid accent of his grandfather, but the accent of someone who could mingle with courtiers and feel content. That had earned him ridicule, too, from the boys who thought he was trying too hard and from Ross, who thought it a terrific thing to sound like a miner born to squalor. He never stopped to consider the fact George was closer to the truth of the lower classes than he could ever hope to be, that it was an impossible thing to be caught between two generations and two classes, that if his family wanted to escape that life it was because they’d seen the truth of peasantry, and that if George wanted to continue that aspiration it was because he’d been raised with the world of the lower classes looming over him in stories like a starving, deformed monster aching to have him back. Ross was the hero of the peasants and George had no clue about any of it, that’s all he wanted to believe. Never mind bloodlines. 

And it’s a difficult enterprise, you must understand, to share a home with people who clip their words and grate out colloquialisms, and to bore into yourself a new way of speaking. To mimic, to practise alone in your bedroom at night, to watch the way your mouth moves in the mirror and start over when it makes the wrong shape. But that didn’t earn their admiration. It earned him the name upstart. 

(Francis’ Aunt Agatha loved that nickname especially. He’d been invited to his house once, to Trenwith, and he’d been anxious the entire week leading up to that brief afternoon. He’d told his parents the day Francis had first offered the invitation and it had been treated like a visit to the king, fussed over and rehearsed like a war council till the fun was out of it altogether, till he was little more than a nervous wreck. But, still, he’d been excited. Had smiled to himself alone in his room when he was supposed to be practicing his bow and when he was imagining the gardens and the sunlight and all the things they’d do together instead. He had a friend. The morning of, his mother had decked him out in some absurd fashion - red velvet waistcoat and silk stockings and silver-buckled shoes. He’d looked like a little doll a rich child would play with once and cast aside. And old Aunt Agatha had said as much. Called him a precious little prince with a terrible sort of sneer and laughed aloud for all to hear. It had been worse than that first day at school, if only because of the way Francis had grinned this sort of agonised, panicked smile and pretended not to see the way George’s ears were red to the tips. The day had been ruined. 

Francis had wanted to play with him in the meadow by the pond but George had insisted on playing the part of the gentleman’s son - quiet strolls through the garden, hand behind his back, polite and stilted conversation. He hadn’t wanted to give Aunt Agatha anything more to condemn him with if she were watching from the windows. Francis’ face had fallen by degrees until it was almost unbearably pained, and then they’d walked back to the house together and said farewell and George had waited on the side of the road out of sight of Trenwith until his father’s carriage came to pick him up, because he couldn’t bear to face Aunt Agatha and be humiliated anymore. It had been a terrible day. Utterly joyless. They’d been awkward around each other for the next week at school.)

He’d tried to court friendship with the right people - the children with surnames he recognised from the lists his father had read out to him in his study; the children who could lend them favour. But he’d been too studied, too anxiously shy, too stiff. Could never smile quite right. They’d turned away from him either way.

That, he supposed, lent itself to this apparent inability to be comfortable in social situations. He’d never gotten much practice as a child. Had never been permitted a childhood at all, really. It had all been about furthering the family name, and friends had fallen by the wayside. Socially inept, they’d call it now. Never properly socialised.

 _Taciturn_ , though, is what they do call it. Haughty. He tries to be sociable, tries to be witty and warm despite the tremour in his voice and the shy nerves making his palms sweat, tries to make friends, and they call him upstart for it. Call him slimy and snivelling. That started in childhood, too, really. Toady little George Warleggan, with the dreams above his rightful station. Isn’t it funny?

And so, when courted companionship had amounted to nothing and his lower class friendliness had earned him unkind nicknames and cruel jibes, he’d turned to silence. Isolation. Quiet study in the classroom during the lunch hour when he could manage it, a secluded spot in the schoolyard when he couldn’t. Attentiveness and a raised hand in class. Proper behaviour befitting the heir to a family on the rise. The catechism memorised better than any boy in the school, Bible verses committed to memory so they could be proudly recited from his desk when called upon, reading comprehension well above average. Warm, polite smiles and curating the teacher’s favour. That hadn’t sat well with the rest of his classmates, either, and they’d laughed at him for that as well. But he pretended not to hear, simply looked straight ahead at the blackboard and wrote careful, neat notes in his schoolbook. Stayed quiet. He still tried to retry his hand at making friends, sometimes. Never amounted to much. Francis kept him company, most of the time, but the attention had reeked of pity and he’d scuttled away the moment Ross saw them together.

He hadn't helped him, either, when Ross and his squawking, messy friends had held George down in the schoolyard and forced toads into his breeches - he'd hung about and worried his hands and watched, a terrible grimace on his face but no attempt made to stop his saintly cousin. George had fought at first, had scuffled around desperately in the dirt and howled. He'd fallen silent soon enough, puckered his chin and clenched his teeth and let it happen, because the heir to a family on the rise didn't weep and wail. They rolled onto their stomach and fished the toads out of their breeches once Ross grew tired of his game and his laughter faded among the beech trees; they brushed aside Francis' guilty, offered hand and kept their eyes on the ground and a small, tight smile on their face; they took the long way home, through the fields and copses, so the wet patch of pond water had a chance to dry in the sun before his parents saw. That's what Warleggan heirs did. 

But the worst thing, really, had been his left-handedness. The scorn of his classmates had left his eyes downcast and his mouth shut and his ears red, but his left hand had left him with bruises and a lingering tendency to tear up at any small conflict. _Unnatural,_ his teacher had called it. _Something to be purged and cured._ He’d spent hours beyond counting with his left hand tied behind his chair, the rope scraping at his wrist and leaving welts and raw, red imprints. _And now,_ his teacher had said, _you will write._ He’d sat there at the front of the classroom, left hand behind his back and quill quivering unsteadily in his right, with the other children sniggering behind their sleeves, and he’d set his jaw, and scrunched up his eyes whenever he felt tears welling, and pretended to peer so attentively at the blackboard; and if his work had been untidy, or if the quill had fallen or rattled against the desk, or if the paper had ripped or the ink blotted or smeared, a terrible snap had cracked through the air and he’d been left with bloody knuckles and a trembling chin and an invented tale for his parents. An utter success, he’d told them, with a pretty, tight-lipped smile and a gaze that stubbornly met theirs and begged not to be found out. An utter success, he’d said, and sniffled alone in his room past dark.

Then, of course, there’d been no more parents. Then, there’d been Uncle Cary and a governess and one heir left to fulfil his parents’ dreams and claw a Warleggan empire out into reality. He’d thought the weight upon his shoulders had been great when they’d still been alive. Now, that weight became all that mattered. Now, he looked his teacher in the eye with a terrible, grieving daring and wrote with his left hand. Now, he bore the bloody knuckles with a numb, heavy-lidded emptiness carefully painted onto his face and wiped them clean with the expensive, monogrammed handkerchiefs at Cardew. 

Now, the dynamic of his relationship with his Francis turned on its head - the Warleggan boy’s anxious shyness settled into cold, fragile self-assurance that could almost pass as charisma, and the Poldark boy’s sympathetic warmth settled into a propensity for trailing behind him and something akin to awe. He always was rather given to worship. 

Now, he learned to raise his eyes and not his head to meet the gaze of someone taller, which was most everyone.

Now, the humiliation of the schoolyard turned brittle and dry and found an outlet in bitterness.

Now, the cruel jibes didn't hurt the same anymore; now, they rolled off him and collected in a little memory vial, to be remembered and used. 

Now, Ross’ supercilious cruelty stuck to his skin like poison. 

Now, all the softness, all the meek insecurities, all the gentle anxieties, all the kindness… well, what are they when there’s no parents, no love, no guidance, no comfort, no explanations - when there’s just the memory of the family dream to keep the grief at bay and give him purpose, when there's just an uncle left to raise a child he was never meant to and never wanted to raise? What are they when an upperclass boy isn’t allowed to let himself mourn, by rules of his own making? What are they when the only light in all this terrible, empty darkness is a name and a dream? 

What are they, then?


End file.
